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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Dactylo-Epitrite has established itself in a privileged position among choral lyric metres, since the greater volume of material and the greater regularity of its component units have encouraged a more careful study, and closely reasoned controversies have arisen and been resolved over its structure. Other kinds of Pindaric metre have for the most part been analysed in a hit-or-miss spirit, and arbitrary schemes have been produced of which rarely are two alike for the same poem, yet little attempt has been made to base any preference upon a theory.
page 21 note 1 (r)indicates that at least one of the responding stanzas has resolution, (
) that at least one has drag.
page 23 note 1 The dochmiac appears, at least on negative evidence, to be a creation of dramatic lyric, perhaps of Aeschylus. Whether he got the idea from choral lyric is impossible to say, but if so he moulded it into something quite new by adapting it to the technique of composition by cola.
page 23 note 2 Maas suggests ‘cholosis’ (cf. xwλtáμβ) as an international technical term for ‘drag’.
page 24 note 1 I have sometimes wondered whether such a supposition would account for the unidentified symbol 
(with its superimposed dot indicating thesis) in the middle of the dochmiac cola of the Orestes musical fragment (see the text in Powell and Barber, New Chapters, ii. 148).
page 25 note 1 It also existed in Lesbian lyric, cf. Ale. fr. 14 D2 and v. infra, Part III.
page 26 note 1 For Ol. 9. 55 v. analysis infra, where the running of what are commonly given as periods 2 and 3 into one line gives a more intelligible explanation of the long syllables.
page 28 note 1 Possibly also in Paean 6. 117 
page 29 note 1 Die neuen Responsionsfreiheiten b.B.u.P., pt. 2. I am in entire agreement with Maas as to the necessity of assuming corruption in the anomalous responsions of unequal length (such as 
), though I see no need to suspect 
(drag in a proper name, as indicated above); possibly also 
(1. 83). My analysis does not, of course, correspond altogether to his, since the principles I have suggested do not admit ‘bacchiacs’ or ‘dochmiacs’ which involve the cut 
in the middle of a period.
